# The 27 Best Nordic Noir TV Series

> Snow, knitwear and long silences carry most of these Scandinavian thrillers, though a few swap the bleak police procedural for forest folklore or boardroom fraud.

*By YPB Team · Published November 1, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-27-best-nordic-noir-tv-series*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The Bridge** — score 1000/1000
   Swedish-Danish series (2011–2018) that opens with a body left exactly on the Øresund Bridge border.
2. **Mammon** — score 633/1000
   Norwegian series (2014–2016) where a journalist uncovers financial crime that implicates his own brother.
3. **Before We Die** — score 542/1000
   Swedish series Innan vi dör (2017–2021), where a detective's undercover son is caught inside a crime family.
4. **Midnight Sun** — score 542/1000
   Franco-Swedish series Midnattssol (2016) sending a Paris detective to Kiruna under the never-setting sun.
5. **The Chestnut Man** — score 542/1000
   Danish Netflix thriller (2021) about a killer leaving little chestnut figures at Copenhagen crime scenes.
6. **Deadwind** — score 487/1000
   Finnish series Karppi (2018–2025) following a widowed detective through Helsinki construction-site murders.
7. **Unit One** — score 487/1000
   Danish series Rejseholdet (2000–2004), an Emmy-winning drama about a mobile national homicide squad.
8. **Sebastian Bergman** — score 487/1000
   Swedish series (2010–2013) starring Rolf Lassgård as an arrogant, grieving criminal psychologist.
9. **The Killing** — score 487/1000
   Danish drama Forbrydelsen (2007–2012), with Sarah Lund's sweaters and one murder case stretched across a whole season.
10. **Arne Dahl** — score 422/1000
   Swedish series (2011–2015) following the elite A-Unit through Arne Dahl's crime novels.
11. **Case** — score 422/1000
   Icelandic legal drama Réttur (2015) in which a teenage ballerina's death exposes a city's secrets.
12. **Bordertown** — score 422/1000
   Finnish series Sorjonen (2016–2020), with an eccentric detective moving to Lappeenranta near the Russian border.
13. **Millennium** — score 422/1000
   The 2010 Swedish miniseries built from Stieg Larsson's trilogy, with Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander.
14. **Rebecka Martinsson** — score 345/1000
   Swedish series (2017–2020) about a Stockholm lawyer pulled back to Kiruna by a local killing.
15. **Wisting** — score 345/1000
   Norwegian series (2019– ) based on Jørn Lier Horst's books about a Larvik police investigator.
16. **Jordskott** — score 345/1000
   Swedish series (2015–2017) mixing a missing-child case with Nordic folklore in a forest town.
17. **The Eagle** — score 345/1000
   Danish series Ørnen (2004–2006) following an Icelandic-born investigator into international crime.
18. **Follow the Money** — score 253/1000
   Danish series Bedrag (2016–2019) about fraud investigators chasing corruption at a green-energy firm.
19. **Wallander** — score 253/1000
   Swedish series (2005–2013) starring Krister Henriksson as Henning Mankell's weary Ystad detective.
20. **Trapped** — score 253/1000
   Icelandic series Ófærð (2015–2021), where a storm seals off a small fjord town after a torso turns up.
21. **Beck** — score 253/1000
   Long-running Swedish police series based on the Sjöwall and Wahlöö novels, on screen since 1997.
22. **Darkness: Those Who Kill** — score 253/1000
   Danish series Den som dræber (2011), with a profiler and detective hunting serial killers.
23. **Dicte** — score 253/1000
   Danish series (2013–2016) about a crime reporter returning to Aarhus and digging into murders.
24. **Thin Ice** — score 253/1000
   Swedish series Tunn is (2020) about a murder in Greenland during an Arctic Council meeting.
25. **The Investigation** — score 0/1000
   Tobias Lindholm's 2020 Danish drama about the police inquiry into Kim Wall's murder.
26. **Modus** — score 0/1000
   Swedish series (2015–2017) based on Anne Holt's novels, with a criminal profiler drawn into a serial case.
27. **The Valhalla Murders** — score 0/1000
   Icelandic series Brot (2019) about killings linked to a former boys' home in Reykjavík.

Tags: tv shows, thriller, crime, scandinavia, nordic noir